For replenishment of parts/materials, a company issues a tender and publishes it to a public blackboard for information exchange via the Internet using electronic tender submission form to find appropriate suppliers.
Frisell and David Torn contribute delicate solo pieces, with the former making a delightful country-inflected vignette out of the 1985 Rypdal theme, Ornen, while Torn recreates Avskjed (from 1980's Descendre) as tender electronic glides and bell-chime sounds.
(Not coincidentally, Singapore may be the first country to force merchants to accept electronic money as legal tender, albeit not until 2008).
Once buyers can readily shop around online, or aggregate corporate demand, or put out tenders on electronic trading platforms, then companies that sell on nothing more than price will be in trouble, unless they are supremely efficient.
Besides its two sailboats, the Oracle team has a 45-foot mothership, six zodiacs for gathering weather data, three 40-foot tenders to tow the yachts to the race course, and a 60-foot tender that gathers electronic data from the yachts and is fitted with spare parts and sails, should anything break.
Unless companies carefully specify the parameters of a procurement order, for example, it makes no sense to invite tenders in an electronic marketplace.
Four years after the launch of London Tenders Portal, the electronic procurement service is now linking 17,500 suppliers with the business needs of nearly half the capital's boroughs, with Ealing the latest to sign up earlier this month.
"This year's Barclaycard Mercury prize shortlist celebrates a fascinating year, marked by a wonderful range of musical voices – urgent, reflective, upbeat and tender, acoustic and electronic, and all with something intriguing to say," said Simon Frith, who has chaired the judging panel since the award was launched in 1992.
Serco has agreed to withdraw from the current tender process for an electronic monitoring contract worth up to £1m, while Mr Grayling plans moves to exclude G4S as it is still attempting to bid.
